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The next generation HR

General Electric aka GE is considered to be the most vital company in grooming leaders of the future. They are the pioneers of detecting leaders from the fore front, nurturing and grooming them to take the senior positions in that company later.

Some companies especially some of the niche consulting firms have fast track system of monitoring and grooming individuals. Even the system is relevant in some of the IT companies, where a person is allowed to take more than 2 or 3 projects at a time depending on his capacity and specific skill sets which he has developed over the years.

Now consider this to be applied to a broad band of the whole community. A group of people flock together, all from the different strata of the company levels, and identify youths in the range of 25-29 to groom and discipline them for the next level of work, with coaching and mentoring. Each one of them has a base mentor who guides them in every step of their professional life right from the start. And this is not not-for-profit organization. It is a full profit organization who takes a nominal share of 1-5 % of their in hand salary as they grow up.

This concept at the very beginning may seem strange, but things do happen in the near future. In fact every company follows a cycle of maturity:

A start up focuses on revenues and slowly migrates after the stabilizing factor to standards and processes, with a thrust on human capital to the refinement of the core to the intellectuals, who move and shake the country or a company.

Strange it might seem, I do not feel that it is really a distant dream when all of us will start giving back to the community in this manner at a stage when the ultimate goal in monetary or intellectual terms is received. And we are all waiting for this next generation of the wave of revolution that will change the facets of the companies.

Probably, it is just extending thoughts to a greater framework, but here lies some food for thought for the next generation HRs.

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Anirban Kar (Riju)

A writer by passion, an engineer by degree, a consultant by profession, a poet by heart, an artist by mind, a sportsman by nature and a man by words! He has completed his degree coursework from the USA, and is an engineering graduate from India.
View all posts by Anirban Kar (Riju)

3 thoughts on “The next generation HR”

Unlike GE -a traditionally a famous developer of people, most firms recruit senior-level talent outside their own organizations. This "buy-only" strategy is both risky and expensive, & compromises the cultural cohesion and institutional memory. Also, companies that can't develop their own talent can seldom attract talent from the outside.Feedback, coaching, mentoring, and training have been employed to help develop executives. Unfortunately, except for action learning and early training in managerial skills, most training programs are not capable of producing truly great executives. First-class corporate universities such as Motorola University and GE's Crotonville can help create strong corporate cultures, align companies with their strategies, disseminate best practices, build personal networks, and spur programs for corporate change. Improving feedback also requires a lot of commitment. For example, noting both deficiencies and positive traits and conveying it to subordinates.The most crucial element is job appropriateness with both headroom (authority and responsibility) and elbow room (scope and variety). People with high potential move through a series of challenging jobs, and after two or three years the learning curve in any position tends to flatten out, and capable people start to chafe. You know the old business adage: "Everyone is promoted to his highest level of incompetency", when your career curve reaches a plateau. You try to gain marketable skills just prior to the maturity of your current learning curve to ensure sustained career growth.Different geographic regions or with a variety of bosses requires executives to master new context. Hence, the current demand for "global players."Learning the craft from highly skilled colleagues is almost as essential as learning from superiors.Finally, I'd like to reiterate: good people in the organization will attract talent from outside. We can continue the current frenzy for job-hopping or contribute in making future leaders, starting with ourselves.

P.S. It is not the accountability of just HR to recruit responsibly, but should be the pursuit of present leaders of firms big or small, to nurture talent, not only to succeed them someday, but to go beyond in business horizons.